


a towel by any other name

by shslduelist (joeri)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Arguing, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 23:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16207910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/shslduelist
Summary: yusaku decides one day he’s going to piss ryoken off.





	a towel by any other name

**Author's Note:**

> all ive written thus far is soulsaku, which is good because they need content, but i really... needed some domestic revsaku.

Yusaku decides one day he’s going to piss Ryoken off.

That’s the story as it’s now being told from Ryoken’s perspective, in which he’s the main character of an epic where his quest for a lower water bill is being sporadically, _consistently_ roadblocked by his own traitorous boyfriend. The stats are as follows: for two months now, Ryoken has dealt with his lover taking far too many showers a day and insisting on an inconceivably anal level of conduct with the linen and towels they share, resulting in a water bill of ¥9,300 and counting.

So this morning for instance, Yusaku absconds with Ryoken’s favorite hand towel (he’s never even _called_ it a hand towel until Yusaku did) and Ryoken finds it hanging up in the laundry room, wet as the day Ryoken had first washed his face with it.

That day must’ve been when he’d been no older than four, he imagines. It _is_ his father’s and he’s merely hung onto it now out of sentiment.

All at once Ryoken decides that enough has been enough. Last he checked, this towel was freshly washed. In fact, he’s certain he can still smell the _last_ wash’s detergent beneath the new one (they’d had an argument over which to use, tropical breeze or mountain fresh; Yusaku relented and let Ryoken have his tropical breeze this time).

And oh, did the scent of a snowy mountaintop ever fill Ryoken’s heart with ire.

Marching from the concrete of the laundry room and onto the hardwood tile of their kitchenette, across the flat and onto the Saxony carpet of their bedroom, every step is fire and acid until the bleary-eyed stare of his boyfriend catches his eyes. Much like fishhooks, he snatches up Yusaku’s collar and shakes the towel near his ear. It still leaks wet onto their shared bedsheets.

“Tell me what this is,” Ryoken demands.

Yusaku never wakes up quicker than when Ryoken is rough with him. His eyebrows angle appropriately and his hand comes up to cup Ryoken’s own in a gesture that could be ameliorating. It could also be a challenge by the tone of his own voice.

“Let go of me.”

“Isn’t this my father’s towel?” he asks, releasing Yusaku’s collar now that Yusaku's full attention is now his.

Not that he needed to resort to acts such as these to have it but, learning this has been a lesson in restraint for Ryoken.

Blinking back rheum and picking it from his eyes, Yusaku squints at the sopping wet fabric, eying the egg-shaped droplets dangling from every end. Thoughtlessly, he curves a single hand beneath it, feeling the cold drip into his palm.

“It is,” he remarks (much to Ryoken’s rolling eyes). “It has Kuromi on it.”

Yes! It does! That was Dr. Kogami’s favorite Sanrio character! All the time that he was alive, he left one present for Ryoken and that was this small 11” x 18” towel with her and My Melody stitched on the front. It has kept Ryoken going all this time… 

But we’re getting sidetracked here.

“Yes, perceptive of you,” Ryoken jeers. “But what was it doing in the laundry room?”

As if the slow, eventual drip of the towel into his hand is more enticing to watch, Yusaku bounces his irises between Ryoken and the fabric he now carries with him.

“Drying.”

Ryoken’s mouth gapes. The towel leaks.

“It wasn’t finished,” Yusaku points out.

“Do you think I don’t know that? _Why had it been washed again_? Our water bill is nearly ¥10,000 a month in case you were unaware.”

It’s Yusaku’s quirking brow that makes Ryoken’s pulse sit on edge. The moment that Yusaku starts to find fault with what he’s saying in any noticeable way is when he squeezes the towel tighter. More water spills into the cup of Yusaku’s hand. Yusaku himself glances down at it before locking eyes with his lover once more.

“You’d placed it on the kitchen sink railing.”

Gauging his expression for any further explanation, Ryoken finds none and is forced to ask in the most incredulous sounding cadence, “What could that possibly mean?”

“Dish towels go on the kitchen sink.”

Oh, _this_ again.

“That sentence doesn’t have any meaning, Yusaku. A towel is a towel. You’re the only one caught up on the semantics of it.”

“Dish towels hang on the kitchen sink. If you hang a different towel that isn’t the dish towel there, it will be used to wash dishes because it’s closest to grab.”

“What does that have to do with why it was washed again? I’ve already said I don’t see the difference,” Ryoken contends.

The water collecting in Yusaku’s palm begins to spill. Without missing a beat, Yusaku supplies a second hand beneath the first to catch the excess. Ryoken feels a vein in his head pulse out of his skull.

“I had been using it to wash my hands with. You put it on the sink so I assumed that you had used it to wash the dishes with. I didn’t want to wash my hands with something that had been touching the dishes and collecting germs, so I threw it in the washing machine with a load of towels.”

Ryoken gesticulates wildly. The towel flaps water all around.

“I didn’t even use it to wash the dishes! Who decided on the placement of these so-called towels?”

“I did,” Yusaku answers predictably.

“Yes, yes I imagine you did,” Ryoken sighs. “Why not let it be used as a dish towel then? If you thought I’d used it as such. No need to waste more water on a tiny load of laundry that only had a couple of towels in it.”

It’s almost warm when Yusaku says, “I didn’t think your father’s towel should be used like that.”

It’s almost warm, if not for the way it subtly implies Ryoken’s using his own father’s heirloom improperly.

“I’ll wash anything I want with my father’s limited edition Sanrio towel, Fujiki Yusaku. You don’t know the bond that we shared.”

Squinting at Ryoken, less like he’s peering up at the sun and more like he’s stuck in front of a pair of unnecessarily vivid headlights, Yusaku’s mouth faults into a crooked line.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Tch,” Ryoken clicks his tongue. “You have nothing to say to that.”

“Yeah,” Yusaku repeats. “That’s what that means.”

Shielding his eyes with a trembling fan of fingers, Ryoken inhales sharply. This is going precisely nowhere. The road map of their argument has run around in circles with no discernable progress made in any direction. Switching up tactics now, Ryoken drops both arms to his sides and sounds cordial.

“Let us go over this again,” he insists; Yusaku nods so he assumes it’ll be well received. “Do you remember what I have been saying for a little over two months now?”

Yusaku’s got a palmful of water that he’s passing between his hands now at this point, like a fun little stimulation mid-conversation. It makes Ryoken want to yank every follicle of hair out of his head.

“I’m assuming you mean the dilemma of the water bill,” Yusaku says, and Ryoken resists an eye roll (yes, of course it would be that, what else could it be.)

“That,” Ryoken confirms. “What makes you think we’ve made any progress on that front at all when you’re flushing entire gallons of water down the drain just to perform acts like this? I’m… flattered that you care about my father’s towel but it really isn’t a priority.”

Yusaku pouts his lip— defiant. His whole jaw seems to frown back at Ryoken when he says, “You shouldn’t confuse me when it comes to the towel placement. I don’t want to wash my hands with a dish towel or wash dishes with a hand towel.”

A fire licks the ice cold slabs of Ryoken’s eyes from the other side. He peers down at Yusaku with a tremor in his tongue.

“I’d love for you to explain to me how to know the difference, _dear._ ”

An equal amount of fervor glares back at Ryoken.

“The dish towel hangs over the sink. The hand towel hangs over the oven rack.”

“ _What._ ”

Ryoken’s entire body slinks to the side as he points with both arms through the door and toward the tile.

“You’d have my father’s towel hang inside _the oven_!?”

“Not inside the oven,” Yusaku corrects. “Just the handle on the outside.”

“You said the oven rack.”

“You misunderstood,” Yusaku corrects again. “The handle to the oven can act as a rack. The oven is directly behind the sink. That’s where I hang the hand towels.”

“I did not misunderstand. You said ‘the oven rack,’ did you not?”

Yusaku lofts one eyebrow strangely, eyes widening just so.

“Why would I put a towel for consistent use inside of the oven?”

“ _Why would you do any of this_?” Ryoken laments.

Yusaku sighs and when he does Ryoken feels twice as inclined to follow after with a theatrical one of his own. What makes Yusaku think that _he_ is the one being griefed here? Ryoken takes a moment to stare at the floor and observe the wet spots in the carpet. It’s not until then that he realizes how pointless this whole thing is. It almost takes the anger out of him.

He isn’t the one to speak next.

“I’m sorry for stressing you out. How late is it?”

Blue eyes collide with the golden watch on his wrist.

“It’s only two p.m.”

“Let me order your favorite yakitori.”

When Ryoken glances up next, he’s treated to the sight he hadn’t truly admired when he’d barged in here moments ago. The dozen or so white bars flooding in through the blinds beside Yusaku bathe him in a special kind of glow. His hair is curling up and around in a fluffy disorganization, the kind Ryoken likes to smooth his fingers through and tug when he wants attention. Yusaku’s already wiped his hands off against the comforter and is whizzing through his phone with a laserlike quickness, tapping through pages and it manages to make Ryoken’s frown lighten up.

“You don’t have to do that,” Ryoken lies.

“I want to,” Yusaku says, dropping the device to the wayside once the order’s gone through.

Not a second too soon, he’s reaching a single hand out for his boyfriend.

It’s blunt, when Yusaku admits he’s wrong. It’s one of the better traits about him, Ryoken thinks to himself as he takes the other man’s fingers and locks them with his own.

“I was thinking about what I would’ve wanted if I were you,” Yusaku confesses, “And not what you had expressed upset over for a while now.”

Yusaku pulls back on his hand and it forces Ryoken to take a seat beside him. It’s only then that Ryoken realizes he’s still got this light pink and lavender towel in his grip, bleeding water all over his pants, the floor, and these warm sheets. He regards it more like a blight now between his thumb and forefinger and deposits it on the nightstand beside them. From there, he moves to snatch up Yusaku’s other hand, not stopping until Yusaku’s heated palm is slick from it.

He doesn’t think to speak until it dawns on him that Yusaku’s keeping eye contact rather intensely— expectantly.

“Yes, that’s alright,” says Ryoken, the words coming out strange when they feel so incongruent with how he feels. “Well, it’s not but… we’re making up now,” he amends.

“Does this help?” Yusaku asks, and then he kisses Ryoken— chaste, quick, and never, _never_ enough.

Ryoken shakes his head just enough to make their noses nuzzle against one another, eyes halfway sheathing themselves.

“Not yet.”

But he does not move. Waits instead for Yusaku to come back again, pressing their lips against one another’s in a deeper way, holding onto Ryoken’s bottom lip with both of his until the motions pull a soft sound out of both of them.

Teasingly, Yusaku pulls back. His poker face is never finer than in these times.

“Does that?”

“Stop,” Ryoken whispers, words crawling across the canyons of Yusaku’s mouth until his tongue follows after.

For _this_ , every argument feels so very small in comparison. For every fistful of Yusaku's sour candy locks, every mumble of heaven into his waiting mouth, the bumps in the road aren't so bumpy and the head knocks all but become… manageable.


End file.
